Henry Louis Gates's supposedly favorable assessment of Rice's wartime leadership in Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008, is just one reason that David Margolick gives the new book a lukewarm review in this week's N.Y.Times Book Review. The book, a compendium of photographs and entries about the signal events and people in African-American history from 1513 to the election of President Barack Obama, strikes the reviewer as ambitious but seriously deficient. Margolick criticizes Gates's editorial choices, finds numerous factual errors in the 487-page book, and accuses Gates of careless analysis. Life Upon These Shores is "superficial," and "boosterish," the reviewer concludes. That's much less than we should expect from one of America's "most eminent black scholars," says Margolick.